20-Year-Old British Model Kidnapped & Auctioned Off Online

A British model's agency arranged what they thought was a photoshoot for her in Milan last month, but it took a frightening turn. After she showed up at the apartment where she thought she was modeling, the people who had claimed to be shooting an ad campaign kidnapped her, according to the Italian paper Corriere Della Sera.

At the site where the 20-year-old thought the shoot would take place, two men attacked her, injected a sedative into her, covered her head with a pillowcase, and put her in a duffle bag, which they threw in the back of a car, The Daily Beast reports. They drove down toward the border of France, where they trapped her in a room, handcuffed her to a dresser, and put her up for auction on the deep web — a secret part of the internet used for illegal activities, according to a police statement released to The New York Times. The starting bid was more than $300,000, according to The Daily Beast. The New York Times reports that the kidnappers demanded this much in ransom from the model's agent.

The woman was let go on July 17, when the kidnappers determined that since she had a kid, she couldn't work for them. They had been hoping to traffic her into the sex trade, according to Corriere della Sera. There isn't any evidence that the agency paid ransom. The following day, a suspect identified as Lukasz Pawel Herba, a citizen of Poland living in the U.K. who had allegedly taken pictures of the model in secret while she was in the U.K., was arrested. The investigation is still ongoing, and investigators think the kidnappers could also be targeting other models, according to The Daily Beast.